Touched by an Angel

Seeing these natural treasures on the sides of mountains is still an extraordinary experience.

Have you ever seen an angel? I have. Lest you think I’m a wacky mystic, let me explain.

To encounter this angel you do have to go to higher country. You can’t have a personal experience with her from the roadside, in the valley. You have to work—literally climb a mountain, into thinner air—for this discovery.

The angel I refer to is the Angel of Shavano, a shallow, snow-filled couloir, or gully, with two diverging branches at the top—two upstretched arms in the center of Mt. Shavano’s (14,231 ft.) east slopes. The Angel is a herald that directs the way to the top.

The Angel of Shavano (circled)

True discovery in the wilderness requires getting out there to explore. An investment of time and sweat.

It’s a hard climb. The body of the Angel rises from 12,000 feet to 12,800 feet. As you ascend her snow slope (she doesn’t mind, really, although it may feel a little improper), at the top of the body, you must choose an arm. The southern arm leads to a 13,380-foot saddle; the northern arm leads directly toward the summit. Both point the way to the top of the mountain and the clouds beyond.

This mountain is part of the Sawatch Range that runs through the heart of the Colorado Rockies. Both the northernmost and southernmost Sawatch fourteeners, Mount of the Holy Cross and Mount Shavano, have snow features with religious significance. For both peaks, it requires an effort to locate these symbols on the mountainside. They’re not Indiana Jones-like discoveries, but seeing these natural treasures on the sides of mountains is still an extraordinary experience.

Whether hiking through dense woods, trekking across green rolling hills or flower-carpeted meadows, exploring ocean tide pools, or climbing steep mountainsides, every turn in the path on these journeys can offer new and different views, varied and fresh perspectives, beautiful and wondrous things to see and do. But the wilderness doesn’t give up these experiences without an investment. We make the effort, and the reward isn’t just in reaching the destination, but also in the joy of discovery along the way.

Sir Francis Youngblood probably said it best: “To those who have entered them, the mountains reveal beauties they will not disclose to those who make no effort. This is the reward mountains give to effort. And it is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly to those who enter them that we learn to love the mountains and go back to them again and again. The mountains reserve their choice gifts for those who journey into them and stand upon their summits.”

Cherished outdoor experiences await us. But I won’t find them sitting on my couch, nor from the National Geographic Channel, and not by cruising past a scenic location at 75 miles an hour on the highway. True discovery in the wilderness requires getting out thereto explore. An investment of time and sweat. Putting some distance between ourselves and noise and sight pollution, taking the time to walk a path to a natural panoramic vista, turning a rock over to look under it, sitting so still in the forest that a woodland critter doesn’t even know we are there. Going deeper, farther. Going higher.

On a mountainside, or back in the valley with the civilized, if I’m not making new discoveries every day, maybe I’m not making the effort. Life is ready to reveal itself. It’s a sacred promise. A contract. Perhaps I need to get my rear end off the La-Z-Boy and prepare to go higher and farther. Who knows what grand views, surprises and adventures are waiting around each next bend?

Frederic Buechner wrote, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and the pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments and life itself is grace.”

Angels, we’re told, are messengers. Perhaps the message to me from the Angel of Shavano was that great experiences await me in the future. But not without sacrifice.